Leaves in the Storm
by Nikigami
Summary: Ultimecia, the sorceress from the future, is defeated with a less resounding victory than the SeeD team would have preferred. Now, the members must choose their paths in unfamiliar worlds, and try to find some form of meaning in their new surroundings.
1. Cause,

**Disclaimer:** All Final Fantasy characters, storyline fragments, geographical locations, etc, etc, etc. are owned by Squaresoft, not me. obviously...  
  
Author's notes - This is my first attempt at this sort of writing, so any reviews (positive or negative) will be GREATLY appreciated! Also, the rating will almost definitely change from PG as the story goes on. Hope you enjoy!  
  
  
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_(a small girl listens intently at a door, her face scrunched in concentration. her posture grows more agitated as the off-tune melody sung by her companion grows more ear-splitting.)  
  
"SEFIE!! Be QUIET!" She turned from the door with an expression so exasperated, any witnesses to the scene would have died laughing at such a serious demeanor on the tiny face. But since no one else was present, and the singer paid no attention whatsoever (if indeed she heard it), the effect was completely lost.  
  
The girl threw up her arms, and immediately felt a raking pain down her back. She cried out and spun around, looking for its source. Sefie was still across the room, caught up in her world of what she considered music. Any further thoughts in the other girl's mind were interrupted by a sort of hissing, fizzing sound. She threw open the door of the outside and stared.  
  
Four boys of similar ages were crouched around a conglomeration of black and red paraphernalia, and every one of their eyes was glued on the bright spark that traveled down a fuse towards the pile. The girls simply stood, unable to move or speak.  
  
A mere ten inches from its destination, the spark hit a pile of sand someone had carelessly brushed over the fuse, and disappeared, leaving only a tiny thread of smoke rising upwards.  
  
She suddenly found her voice again, and launched a tirade of physical and verbal abuse at the boys, including many references to Matron, stupidity, and death.  
  
"You're not even DOING it right! That was gonna explode and make you so dead you can't believe it!" She stalked back towards the house, with the clear intent of bringing authoritarian retribution onto the heads of the delinquents. In her righteous indignation, she ignored the painful, unexpected jolt to her shoulder, assuming it had been caused by her own clumsiness. She glanced back, expecting their laughter, but none came.  
  
Instead, the biggest of the boys called out, "Well we're gonna set them off anyway, Quisty, and unless you tell us how, we ARE going to get blown up and it'll be ALL YOUR FAULT!"  
  
Trapped, Quisty sullenly complied. Within a few minutes, the fireworks had been set up properly, and the boys were safely situated away from the rocket heads. Turning back with the intent to get Matron outside NOW, she suddenly doubled over and fell to the ground crying. The pain had returned, now spreading down her front like fire. She only had time to see the boys running towards her for one hazy moment.  
  
Then, the fireworks exploded.  
  
_   


* * *

  
  
Quistis' mind snapped back to consciousness just as her head collided with a stone wall. She lay there, not sure if the twisting and bouncing sensation was a physical reality, or an effect of her collision.  
  
Two things came to her reeling mind first. One, she was hurt... her whole body was a mass of bruises and scrapes, especially her chest and stomach, which felt like she had been dragged face down over jagged rocks. Two, it was raining. She lay against the wall, thinking of those two things. When no explanation came to mind, she tried to open her eyes and lift her head. A fresh blast of pain washed over her. Something thick and wet had obscured her vision.  
  
This new pain formed another word in her mind: SeeD. She focused with all of her being around that word and used it to sublimate her pain, stop the world from revolving, wipe the blood out of her eyes, stand up, and make sense of things.  
  
She recovered the use of her mind and body to a degree, but instantly realized that the heaving, convulsing landscape was actually the physical reality. She fought to her feet - not an easy task, especially with the thunderstorm making all the stones slippery.  
  
Having a barely tentative control of her immediate surroundings for the time being, Quistis allowed herself to look up and see what she could see illuminated by the frequent lightning blasts.  
  
There was a castle... whose churning defied the laws of gravity and common sense. A bridge stretching out before her, her back pressed to the back of the castle behind her, and... what looked like a guardhouse; small and circumspect in its appearance, yet remaining still amid the spasms of the rest of the landscape. Quistis got the disturbing impression that this structure was somehow _ drawing _ creation towards itself like a black hole.  
  
With a burst of revelation, she suddenly remembered everything. Squall, Selphie, and Zell, who were presumably inside that thing, trying to save the entire space-time continuum. Rinoa and Irvine, who, by the looks of things, had probably been thrown off the bridge into the swirling vortex of pure space beneath it. Quistis could no longer sense their presences. However, her military mind told her to concentrate on the three members of the offensive team... she refused to even think of Rinoa and Irvine unless she could do something for them, and it appeared she could not.  
  
Quistis could barely even think with the convulsions of the earth, and decided the first thing to do was to get to a more stable place. The small, unmoving "guardhouse" was totally inaccessible to her; she would never make it across that bridge. She started inching along the side of the wall until she found something she could squeeze herself into. Quickly, she wedged herself into one of the recessed portions of the wall. She was still being thrown around, but now had something to brace herself with.  
  
Once she decided that the position was likely the best she could hope to get, she reached out with her mind to her three friends whose existences she could still be sure of. Quistis had never been an empath, or even heard of any with that ability, but it came naturally to her in the confused world she found herself in. It surprised her, of course, but she could wonder about such things later. She closed her eyes, locked her muscles, and connected to the minds of Squall, Selphie, and Zell.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
The chaos she had witnessed was nothing compared to what she found surrounding Ultimecia herself, and her three combatants. Swirls of nothingness and swirls of reality twisted together and danced in ways that no composer's notes could ever match. It was pointless for Quistis to try and describe it even to herself. It was pure Chaos, where time, matter, temperature, emotion, sound, light, and other aspects of the universe that Quistis had never witnessed before were all kneaded together in a monstrous quasi-existence. It was impossible that anything could even EXIST as a single organism, much less that it could actually function in this permeating lunacy, yet Squall, Selphie, and Zell did, as did the grotesque form of a Griever-junctioned Ultimecia. The SeeD's fought, and Ultimecia fought. Though they were obviously drained and hurting, Quistis' friends somehow warred against the sorceress with a power that they had never shown on earth.  
  
Zell was, quite literally, a whirlwind of strength. The words "punch" and "kick" were inadequate to describe the blows he directed at Ultimecia. Where his flesh and blood could not keep up, energy burst from his physical body in beams and swirls of power that lacerated the inconsistent landscape. He glowed with an ecstasy of battle that would have been beautiful enough to bring tears to Quistis' eyes, had she possessed eyes there. However, even Zell's battle-hardened physique could not fully handle that power. Even as she watched, Zell's body was being torn from the inside out, as well as being pummeled by Ultimecia's ruthless barrage of magical attacks. If not for the healing spells that constantly knit his body back together, Zell would have most likely already annihilated himself with his surges of energy.  
  
The healing power was coming from Selphie. Her nunchaku were gone, and she had committed herself fully to the magical stores within her. She knelt on both knees, hunched over, her head hanging in exhaustion, but with her bare arms thrust forward with unwavering strength. The brilliance of her magics shone even in the confusion that constituted the strange world, tracing ancient, immutable patterns in greater and greater intricacies over herself and her friends. White, glowing strands formed hieroglyphical curtains around Squall and Zell, with more strands flying from Selphie's fingers to replace the ones that were being shaken loose by Ultimecia's torrent of spells. Many got through, but enough were stopped by Selphie's barrier to allow the two warriors to focus on their one, ultimate enemy. Fountains of purple burst from her palms, continuously repairing the damage to their flesh. Aside from this, Selphie even had enough strength to occasionally let loose a silver bolt at Ultimecia, giving her an instant's pause each time and allowing Squall or Zell to advance on her further.  
  
Squall himself seemed to transcend mortal limitations. If Zell's onslaught was beautiful, Squall's efforts were worth dying for simply to behold for a moment. In the hands of the Lion-Hearted, reality and unreality were just two paints in his palette. His gunblade was no longer anything truly resembling a gunblade, but instead some other sort of instrument more suited to his newfound power, which Squall wielded with a proficiency unsurpassed in mathematical or artistic perfection.  
  
It was a weapon, and yet there were aspects of it that made the thing difficult to place under that benign heading. As space protrudes from one dimension to two, and then three, Squall's blade extended itself into impossible angles and contortions that gave Quistis a splitting headache just to look at, but seemed to be understood perfectly by its wielder. Something that could never have been imagined in reality now took on an unearthly attribute of perfect destruction in the surrounding insanity. His attacks could not be described as anything but a dance. Squall danced to the music of Ultimecia's fury, and drove pain into her very being with every touch of his.  
  
Entranced by the hypnotic spectacle, Quistis let her mind fall away from the objective actuality of the battle. Her shock was sudden when Zell abruptly stopped moving, and simply stood with his eyes closed and arms uplifted, chest heaving. She snapped back to actuality and saw Squall no longer fighting, but simply straining to control the awesome elements at his command. Selphie had collapsed; conscious, but too exhausted and drained to lift a finger or call forth the least of her spells. Ultimecia was a mass of agony and failing flesh and magic, but with enough strength left, it seemed, to call forth one last curse upon the faltering trio.  
  
The tensity of the situation broke when both Ultimecia and Zell reached their breaking points. Ultimecia channeled all of her being into a variant of the time-compression technique she had perfected, sending a blast of energy towards the three that would break their ties to any single dimension, flinging them to the mercy of Time, which had the power to drop them at any point in the continuum, or simply annihilate them as completely as if their ancestors had never been born, if their spirit could not handle the strain.  
  
A split-second after her release, Zell succumbed to the powers raging within him. His last conscious action was to focus it all into one, all-consuming wave of destruction with Ultimecia at its center. The living impression of Zell in Quistis' mind suddenly disappeared, followed closely by Ultimecia. However, her final spell had been cast, and a shuddering burst of blackness was boiling and frothing, sweeping towards Squall and Selphie. Selphie had seen it, and feebly tried to throw up some sort of personal shield in the fraction of a second she had left. Squall however, had no defense whatsoever against the approaching darkness as he wrestled for control with the very powers he had been commanding with such ease. The sight struck an agonizing chord in Quistis' breast, and she screamed out her opposition towards the unfeeling death that rolled inexorably towards the man she loved so helplessly, so desperately, so uselessly.  
  
Flinging aside every pretense of rationality, the SeeD woman channeled all her anger and unimaginable grief at the imminent event into her empathic relationship with the quasi-dimension she was in contact with. With a surge of emotion, she /transferred/ herself there.. interposed herself directly between Squall and his doom. Her last thought, as the power blew her very being into nothingness was satisfaction in her choice, amid the floods of despair and pain that battered her soul until the last instant of her existence.  
  



	2. and Effect

  
The sun beat fiercely down on Squall, slowly sapping his energy even as he slept in a near-comatose state. Sweat poured off his skin in rivulets, soaking his clothes and creating a dark spot of dampness on the otherwise featureless sandy-brown boulder on which he lay. Despite his need for several days of rest, his body simply could not take the incredible heat any longer and forced him into a groggy state of semi-consciousness.  
  
Even before any coherent though crossed his mind, he rolled over onto his back to relieve his frontside, which had been slowly roasted by the rock he was stretched full-length on. The wet clamminess of his sweat-drenched clothes sent a shudder up his spine, and this woke him up more fully.  
  
Squall cracked one eye open, and immediately squeezed it shut as an overwhelming burst of sunlight seared his eyeballs. He instinctively threw up his arm to shield his eyes, but only managed a weak flop of his wrist, which accomplished nothing and sent a brief jolt of pain down his arm.  
  
He forced himself the rest of the way to consciousness, and tried, with more steadfastness this time, to lever himself up to a sitting position. The effort almost knocked him back into unconsciousness, and he sprawled back on the stone fighting the blurriness that filled his vision.  
  
Lying there, panting, and futilely trying to coax strength back into his muscles, Squall realized the urgency of his situation. His mouth was dry and burning, and he attributed the weakness with severe dehydration. If he didn't do something soon, he would lose what little remained of his energy and lie there, immobilized, until death took him.  
  
With this reflection, he tried opening his eyes once again. As before, his head burned with the intensity of the sun's glare, but he persisted. Eventually, the light dimmed a bit, and he managed to gradually open his eyes fully and see his surroundings.  
  
He was in a wasteland. As far as he could see from his limited perspective, the strewn boulders and rock formations stretched on forever, with no hint of civilization. The sight made him close his eyes again, but only for a moment. His survival reflexes took over, and the sensible part of his brain told him that no matter what the circumstances, no matter what his perceptions, he simply had to get out of this sun, quickly, before he died.  
  
This mental statement opened an inner reservoir of strength, and Squall thrust himself to the edge of the boulder, and, seeing the ground a mere four feet down, rolled off and landed on his feet. His legs buckled and he crashed into the ground, which forced a harsh, grating cry of pain out of his mouth. But he was out of the sun, and that was what mattered.  
  
He lay in the relative coolness of the boulder's shadow and simply caught his breath and tried to reflect a little.  
  
_ My primary objective is to survive, but how am I supposed to survive out here? Why AM I here anyway? Was this just a random blast through dimensions from Ultimecia? Or did she send me somewhere in particular? _  
  
It didn't look too particular to him, Squall decided. A lot of nothing in particular, that's what this place was. Despair started to inch its way towards him.  
  
_ What am I supposed to do here? Nothing... nothing besides death in a few hours. Without water... _  
  
The sudden revelation snapped his head back an entire inch. Water... his canteen! With trembling fingers, he unsnapped the clasp and flung the bottle to his lip, sucking desperately at its contents.  
  
Water! Warmed by the hours in the sun, it was no less delicious as it coursed down his parched throat. In his deliriousness he had forgotten about this most basic of things. Never despair, Squall told himself stoically. As long as he still breathed, there was something he could do, and thus some chance, however infinitesimal, to accomplish something that might bring about his salvation from present troubles. This self-evident philosophy had always aided him before, and there was no reason it should fail him now. At the moment, he needed water and his need was being met. Hastily, he stopped drinking and capped the bottled as he remembered his situation. He had to conserve what he had left.  
  
Squall propped himself back up against the side of the boulder, and rested his head back.  
  
He wasn't going anywhere as long as the heat persisted, and his muscles, though recovering, wouldn't take him too far anyway. Pushing any worries to the back of his mind, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift back into sleep, trusting himself to wake up before too long.  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Rinoa tossed another stone halfheartedly into the ocean, and watched the ripples pattern the cerulean waters until the slight swell of the waves erased them from existence again. She stared without any real interest at the blank horizon of water and air, and groped for another stone on the ground beneath her.  
  
"Would you at least DO something!? Maybe you want to stay here and rot, but I kind of want to get off this godforsaken island before I STARVE to death!"  
  
Rinoa sighed and sat up, leaning back against her palm tree. "I don't... just... oh, Irvine, what do you want me to do? You've got my only extra blade, and it's not like there's anything else to do here." She picked up another rock and studied it carefully before letting it drop again. She twisted around to look at Irvine. "Would you like me to try digging for truffles?" she inquired, sarcastically.  
  
Irvine stood up from the tree he was crouched in front of, stretching cramped muscles. He tossed down the circular pinwheel blade he had been using to saw at the trunk, and leaned back, wishing for his hat. The burning rays of the sun beat down on the island with full force, and the sparse vegetation didn't offer much protection. He could do without his gun, and Rinoa without her launcher, for the time being at least, but he missed his hat badly.  
  
Though he was baking in his long pants and cowboy suit (he had long since doffed his trenchcoat), he was still better off than Rinoa. He winced as he looked at her painfully red arms and legs again. In this climate, nothing was more of a curse than her snowy complexion.  
  
He sighed. "If you can find some truffles, go ahead." He folded his arms, expecting a quick counter. When none came, he looked at her more closely. He had rarely seen the girl with less life in her as now. It was probably the sun, he reasoned. He was much more used to it than she was. She was probably getting sunstroke or something... and it wasn't as if the situation was totally helpless. What looked like a chunk of mainland was visible from the opposite side of the island, and it could probably be reached if they could build some sort of raft. With the extra blade Rin always carried with her, Irvine could cut the wood for it, albeit with plenty of blisters and sore muscles.  
  
Wishing he could do something for his female companion, Irvine turned back to his work. The best thing he could do now was to get them off this pathetic island before they starved to death, or ran out of water from their canteens.  
  
His thoughts turned back to the rest of the team. He couldn't imagine what had happened to Squall, Zell, and Selphie. They could be dead, time-compressed, forced to retreat from the castle, or even celebrating the Ultimecia's defeat. Irvine did wonder about Quistis, though. He and Rinoa had been tossed off opposite sides of that bridge, and still found themselves together. He didn't presume to understand the time-warped insanity of the futuristic sorceress' castle, but it should still be expected that Quistis follow Irvine and Rinoa.  
  
He decided to simply assume the best until something should prove it otherwise. In a strange land, and probably a strange time, confidence in himself and his friends was one thing Irvine could hang on to.  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Selphie stared in complete disbelief at the sight granted to her by the rising sun. She knew she was in a completely alien place... it would be impossible not to see that, what with the ugly, boxy architecture of the structure she had climbed up through, combined with the dust-corrupted signs and writings, which reflected the straight, angular nature of the place. What kind of people could have such a complete disregard for art? There wasn't a single real picture in the building, from what she had seen of it.  
  
Which hadn't been much... though the long sleep had removed much of the exhaustion that came from the battle with Ultimecia, her spell supply still remained low, and she was reluctant to use anything but the bare minimum of light-giving magics to find her way upwards, where she considered to be the safest position until morning.  
  
She had found the top, and rested there in the open, though not particularly fresh-tasting night air until the insinuating glow of the sun silhouetted her surroundings.  
  
Her first reaction was one of awe, as the black outlines of rectangular structures grew in her vision. It was incredible... Esthar may have been this big, but you sure couldn't see it from this sort of perspective very often. The buildings stretched out as far as she could see, and seemed to completely fill the land, with no breaks of civilization apparent anywhere.   
  
And it was all silent. In such an incredible landscape, the silence was stifling, covering the world in an invisible yet tangible shield that completely smothered any signs of life there may have been. It might as well have been locked in time, for all Selphie could tell.  
  
As the light grew, Selphie noticed the washed out grey color of all of the buildings, the cracks in the concrete, and even some structures that had simply collapsed into themselves, wearied by the same pass of time that had affected everything else. Most of the old city was still standing, though long years had made their mark on those buildings as well.  
  
A huge, foreign city... built for a massive population. There was the occasional gust of wind whispering in her ear, and the sound of her breath, but other than that there was no sound at all. It was a great, ugly, sleeping city.  
  
No, not sleeping, Selphie corrected herself. Dead. It was a dead city. The whole think stank of disuse and rot. Not of rotting bodies, but of rotting stone. Rotting metal. Rotting air.  
  
...Rotting air?? She shook the thought from her head in disgust. That was the last time she would try to metaphorize anything, Selphie told herself. But... just seeing that sight couldn't help but inspire deeper thoughts in her, however weakly she might put them.  
  
She sat down on the edge of her building, and hugged her knees, curling up as tight as she could. Her wonder was fading slightly after that first glimpse of her new surroundings, and in its place sprouted a nervousness that kept growing in the back of her mind. Speculations began running through her head, ranging from some terrible, hideous disease to some equally hideous monster or monsters that were dangerous enough to warrant a mass exodus from this huge city.  
  
"Shut UP, Selphie!", she growled at herself. The young but experienced SeeD was quickly becoming a scared little girl. These sorts of ideas were completely unnecessary, and would have her jumping at shadow after shadow, or simply going out of her mind with unfounded terror.  
  
She resolutely pushed them out of her mind, and mentally boarded a more productive train of thought. One that would take her far, far away from the terror of the night. _and with no delay to the lair of the light..._  
  
And wark wark wark like a damned chocobo in flight. Selphie groaned and buried her head in her arms, wishing desperately for the full daylight she would need to light her way on the streets, where she would silence that aggravating right side of her brain with solid action.  
  
The sun rose slowly.  
  



End file.
